Long Way Gone

by Charles Martin

  Dad sipped his root beer. “Yes?”

  “Thank you.”

  By the time I turned nine I’d gotten used to the blond guy and his friends showing up at Dad’s services. I didn’t know if other people saw them or not, but no one else mentioned them, and I didn’t want to open my mouth and act the fool. I decided they were sort of like a rainbow. Not something you saw every day and you could only see from just the right angle.

  One day when Dad and I were closing up after a service, he found me sitting at the piano. He said, “Time for bed, big guy.”

  I pointed. “What do I do about Blondie?”

  “Back again, huh?”

  I shook my head. “Never leaves.”

  He tapped his ear. “He’s come to hear you.”

  “But, Dad . . .”

  Blondie had started bringing friends. At first, it was just one or two. But lately the numbers had grown. More like a crowd.

  “They’re everywhere.”

  He laughed. “They must really like the way you sing.”

  I wasn’t quite sure Dad was getting the picture. What I was seeing wasn’t puppy dogs and lollipops. And to me they were as real as the piano. “Dad, this guy could turn Big-Big inside out. He’s no joke.”

  “Is he angry?”

  I considered this. “I don’t think he’s angry, but I do think he’s at war.”

  “Do the others look like him?”

  “Pretty close.”

  “Can you hear anything?”

  I nodded.

  “What do you hear?”

  “I hear . . . singing.”

  “Can you hear the words?”

  I nodded and spoke quietly, knowing they could hear me. “Yes, sir.”

  Dad laughed, reached into his satchel, and handed me a little black notebook and a pen. He said, “Then maybe you should write down their songs.”

  I’ve been writing them down ever since.

  15

  Dad was rather intense about my musical training. While he took care of the bluegrass, Big-Big schooled me on the blues. Big-Big grew up in Memphis, literally walking up and down Beale Street, so he knew a thing or two about Delta blues. One of the highlights of his younger life was that he’d actually heard Robert Johnson, and he vehemently maintained that Mr. Johnson did not sell his soul to the devil. “Couldn’t have. Anybody that plays like that ain’t owned by no devil.”

  But Dad felt one primary piece was missing. And that piece was the dreaded classical. Mozart. Bach. Beethoven. I hated it. And I hated all those white-wigged paintings.

  For my tenth birthday, he gave me two presents. The first one I didn’t want: Miss Vermetha Hagle. Miss Hagle was a BV local who had played thirty years with the philharmonic something-or-other. Dad paid her to give me lessons for four excruciating hours every Wednesday.

  Having a cavity filled was more appealing. She was horrible. Her lessons were horrible. Her bedside manner was horrible. Her breath was horrible. And she sat like there was a pole shoved six feet up her backside. She’d never married and I could understand why.

  But no matter how I pleaded, no matter how I feigned sickness, no matter what manner of excuse I dreamed up, Dad wouldn’t budge. Gibraltar. He said, “You can’t break the rules until you learn what they are.”

  “But why can’t I just learn from you and Big-Big?”

  “ ’Cause you already know more than me and Big put together. Now, I don’t expect you to like it, but I do expect you to learn it. And I expect you to learn it really well.”

  I suffered nearly eight years under that horrible woman with her yellow teeth, beady little eyes, and ruler, with which she constantly smacked the backs of my hands. But those lessons were one of the best things my dad ever did for me. And if I bumped into that woman on the street today, I’d kiss her on the mouth.

  The second thing my dad gave me for my tenth birthday was a guitar of my own. Given the amount of time I was spending playing his guitar, he knew I’d caught the bug. Playing guitar was no passing fancy. The problem he bumped into was that for me, Jimmy had become the guitar by which all others were judged.

  The guitar Dad gave me had nylon strings, so when he handed it to me, I think my face betrayed my concern. He quickly explained, “Guitars have voices. Like people. A nylon string guitar, if played right, can be more expressive than a steel string. More emotive. I know you love Jimmy, but you have more range than Jimmy can keep up with. This one can keep up.”

  I studied it. The body was smaller, which made it easier to play, but the neck was wider and strings thicker. A bit of a trade-off. I ran my fingers across the strings and tried to hide the fact that my heart was hurt that he’d not given me Jimmy. But playing that guitar, I understood what he was talking about. I didn’t have to push as hard to get as much sound out of it, which helped given my smaller hands and fingers. I named him Half Pint.

  Puberty brought some changes to my voice. Most were good. I grew in volume, power, control, yet oddly enough retained the ability to reach high notes while also extending the ability to sing lower. Note I said lower, not low. Dad sang low. I sang above him. Over the next couple of years, Dad and Big-Big turned the music over to me, and as I came into my own, the crowds grew. A lot. Pretty soon, more people were coming to see me than to hear him. Though Dad tried to protect me from that knowledge, I knew it.

  And that wasn’t always good.

  Our schedule never changed. Depending on the distance, we were out on Thursday or Friday morning, back Sunday night or Monday. About once every two months, we were gone a whole week to ten days. I grew used to the road, and there were few parts of Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado that I’d not seen. While Dad knew where he was going and could get there with his eyes closed, he left a lot of the navigation to me.

  This meant that I learned to read a map, and with so much highway time I read a lot of them. I found them rather interesting. This drove my ninth-grade geography teacher nuts, as I missed most of the first quarter but still made straight As. She was further incensed when I didn’t miss a single question on the final, including both extra credit questions.

  Dad worked with my teachers, who were more than mildly irritated by my constant absences, but they couldn’t argue with my work or work ethic. Dad cracked the whip, and while he and Big-Big shared the driving, I studied.

  Sort of.

  While Dad and Big-Big sat up front, Jimmy and I stretched across the backseat of the truck cab. There were twelve-hour days when I played nonstop. There were four-day weekends when I played for forty hours. Dad and Big-Big would find old gospel or bluegrass stations on the AM radio, and I’d play along. As the months and years ticked by, I got to where I could hear the first few notes of a song and know what key it was in and usually where it was going. My ear grew so in tune that I could play back music in my mind, slow it down, and hear individual notes and chords on a guitar. Dad would hear me in the backseat picking out a rather complicated tune, and he’d say, “Okay, now play it on Half Pint.” So I’d switch guitars and play the same song on nylon strings. I didn’t know it at the time, but Dad was challenging me to express and emphasize different emotions with the same tune. He was teaching me to speak a new language. The language of guitar.

  As my musical ability grew, so did my interest in and imitation of those who played it. Dad was careful to steer me away from rock-and-roll, declaring that everything I needed to know could be gleaned from bluegrass, blues, and classical. And, of course, hymns. He said, “You learn those four, and everybody in rock-and-roll will want to be you, and not the other way around.”

  I would not describe my dad as rigid about much of anything save one thing: listening to the Grand Ole Opry on the AM radio stations that broadcast at night as we drove cross-country. If he was driving, and they were broadcasting, he was listening. I heard a lot of country music. Many of the best guitar players the world knew came out of bluegrass, and most of them played the Opry. This meant I was
introduced to some of the best and most well-known licks on a nightly basis. The songs were not difficult to learn. Ninety-nine percent of them were just three or four chords, a bridge, and a chorus. I could hear a tune, and my fingers would dig it out—match the notes. Dad and Big-Big would shake their heads and just look at each other.

  One would comment, “That ain’t fair.”

  The other would respond, “No, it is not, but it sure is fun to watch.”

  Thursday nights were Dad’s favorite because they showcased their best. Dad never missed. Like, never. We set our drive-time schedule around what he called Ryman Radio. Some of the biggest names in the business came out to play on Thursdays, and some shows were two or even three hours long. When a particularly great player would light up the stage singing some harmony or playing something only a few can play, Dad would turn up the volume and slap the dashboard.

  “Think of all the greats who have stood where that boy is standing. Monroe. Scruggs. Williams. Cash. The King.” Several times, after a particularly good show, he would click off the radio, nod knowingly, and glance in the rearview. “You’ll play the Ryman one day.”

  Big-Big would nod in agreement. “That’s right.”

  I’d never dreamed that high. “You think?”

  A long pause. Another glance. “And that’ll only be the beginning.”

  In between my sophomore and junior years, we were driving back from a weekend outside Taos, and Big-Big was teaching me a Robert Johnson lick. He said something about Johnson being one of the first recorded members of the 27 Club.

  “The 27 Club? What’s that?”

  “Musicians, singers, and songwriters who all died at the age of twenty-seven.”

  I thought he was talking about some type of disease. “What’d they die from?”

  “Some were freak accidents, but most died from drugs or suicide.”

  Dad scratched his head. “I’ve never understood that. Why would you leave a show to get high or drunk? Just what did these folks need to escape from? They’re playing music. Where’s the hard part in that?”

  Dad’s fame continued to grow. His face graced the cover of several regional magazines and newspapers. One headline read: “Sham or Surety? Barroom Picker Turns Tent Revivalist. Do the Blind See and Lame Walk, or Is It Smoke and Mirrors?”

  Whatever people’s opinion, whether skeptic or believer, attendance grew. A lot. Packed venues and standing room only became the norm. We received invites from churches and pastors from all over. Many just wanted to profit off my father, but Dad had two rules, which he never broke. First, he never sold tickets, because he didn’t view himself as entertainment. “Just what exactly would we charge people? Why would I charge for what I have been freely given?” Second, he never took an offering. Never passed the plate or the hat or whatever. That raised a lot of eyebrows among critics, but Dad figured if you want to give, you will. He didn’t need to twist your arm. As a result, folks didn’t feel manipulated, and they trusted my dad.

  And despite his no-offering policy, people did give. They’d seek Dad out and put a check or cash in his hand, and Dad would accept it. Gas cost money.

  As it turned out, a lot of people did this. Dad bought two things with the influx of cash: a tour bus for us and an eighteen-wheeler that carried all the tents and chairs and piano and sound equipment. Then he began hiring drivers and crews to set up and take down the tents. They’d drive ahead, set up, and we’d arrive in time for the first service. This meant Dad and Big-Big were more rested, and as a result, their sermons were a bit longer.

  As attendance grew, and the growing number of unexplainable happenings happened, what some newspapers called miracles and others called sleight of hand, so did the number of critics. Naysayers. Picketers would hold signs and shout, and a few even slashed tires. More often than not, we were labeled as a traveling medicine show and Dad the lead snake-oil salesman. Reporters and investigative journalists would plant crippled or blind folks. Dad could spot them a mile off.

  But controversy brought attention, and that brought radio and television crews with trucks and tall antennas that broadcast across the West.

  I asked him one day, “Doesn’t that bother you?”

  He laughed. “Not in the least bit.”

  It was not uncommon for Dad to preach five times over a weekend, and by the time word spread among the locals, more than five thousand people would attend his final Sunday service. That meant that by my senior year in high school I was routinely playing before more than fifteen thousand people in a weekend. Sometimes more. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was a larger number than many of the big names in the record business.

  My talent brought with it increased notoriety on many levels. One level, for which I was grateful, was with members of the opposite sex. In short, chicks dig guitar players. Girls would find me before a show, make small talk, or give me their number. “Call me.”

  My dad was not overly protective, but he did shield me from the record companies that came calling. One night he could sense the growing tension in me, so he sat next to me on my bunk.

  “Coop, there are going to be a lot of people who tell you how great you are, and how they can make you greater. Put you on some pedestal from which you can never come down. Truth is they don’t care a thing about you, they just want what you got. All they care about is what they can make off you. They look at you like a jumping chicken, and they’re going to offer you lots of money to jump on their stage.

  “Nothing wrong with making lots of money, and if ever a boy was born to stand on a stage, it may well be you. But if you start making money at the expense of why you do what you do, or why you were given this gift in the first place, then you need to ask yourself how badly you want that money. In the end, the cost might be more than you can pay.” He tapped me gently in the chest. “Robert Johnson wasn’t the only man with a guitar to stand at a crossroad and talk with the devil. Every man with a guitar crosses that same street, and the conversation is always the same. So are the promises.”

  16

  There was a bubbling inside me I could not describe. A rumbling, even. I could not tell you what motivated it or where it was coming from, why or how it got there, but I felt like Dad was holding me back. Crushing me under the weight of his thumb. And I was getting more than a little irritated. “Dad, are you saying I can’t ever make a record?”

  “No. I hope you make fifty records. I’ll buy every one. But what you do with an instrument is only half of the gift that is in you.” He pointed to the black notebook that he’d given me, which I’d started carrying between my belt and the small of my back. “I’ve seen how people respond to you when you sing what’s yours. The words you write reach deep. When a man in a shiny suit with a lot of money comes along and wants to cut a record with you singing your own songs the way you want to sing them, the way you want to play them, more power to you. Have at it. Big-Big and me will be in the front row cheering. Until then, guard your gift and guard that notebook. Day may come when you find it’s priceless.”

  One salesman or recruiter after another sought me out. They’d heard about my instrumentals, and the rumor of the hummingbird-blur of my fingers moving across the neck of the guitar and keys of the piano, and since they’d never heard anything like it from someone my age, they wanted to see for themselves.

  But given that I was seventeen, they knew Dad was the gatekeeper. So they’d approach him. Shake his hand. Try to reason with him. Problem was, they had their box, and since I wasn’t a very good fit in my present form, they wanted to take the parts of me that they liked, run them through their music grinder, and then stuff what remained of my soulless body into their prepackaged form.

  While I did not want to admit it, even I could see this. They wanted to completely eradicate any scent of the whole gospel, hymn-singing, Sunday-morning-music thing and saturate me in the cheap cologne of whatever they were selling. Make a rock-and-roll star out of me. Long hair. Mohawk and mascara. T
ight leather pants.

  Eventually they started sending midlevel execs in suits with cash. And over time, the wads got bigger. Dad would listen, figure out their angle, and when they wouldn’t take no for an answer, he’d close the door.

  One day a persistent man found us in a dried-up mining town in northern Colorado. He wore a funny-looking hat and carried a thick wad, and he decided to bypass Dad. He snooped around until he found me tying down tent corners. He never said a word. He just licked his thumb and started counting out the money. I wanted an electric guitar so badly I could taste it, so the sight of fifty hundred-dollar bills had a drug-like effect on me.

  He said, “Can you read music?”

  Thanks to Miss Hagle, I could read music about as well as I could read English. I nodded.

  He spread some sheets in front of me. “Can you play this?”

  It was about as complicated as “Happy Birthday to You.” So I signed some papers, took the money, and agreed to meet the man in town in a few hours. I found him in an abandoned gas station with a Fender Telecaster hooked up to an amp and what looked like an expensive tape recording machine. The man was savvy. He’d painted my name on the guitar. I spent a few minutes getting comfortable with it, and then he spread out the music in front of me. I’d play a number through the way it was scripted once, sometimes twice, and then he’d cut me loose and say, “How would you play it?” It was at that point that I saw the perfect intersection of the three corners of my musical training. When I cut loose, that’s when he really started smiling.

  This continued for an hour or so. And I will admit, it was a lot of fun. Addicting. At one point he excused himself, walked to a pay phone, and made an animated call to somebody who sounded equally animated. The two talked a few minutes while my new friend sipped from a stainless flask. When he hung up he returned to me, offering the flask and smiling. “Nip?”

  What could it hurt? I took the flask, turned it up, and pretended to be as cool as he. I would learn shortly that it was not real cool.